November 2, 2012

Multiple stories provide a magical timeline from Benghazi on 9/11/12 intended to exculpate Obama from any responsibility for what went on.

Examples include Reuters, Bloomberg, the WSJ. I could go on. After being a non-subject for days, all of a sudden Benghazi is THE STORY for the MSM. Because now they have a narrative that absolves their hero from blame.

Except it doesn’t. At all.

The basic story is that the CIA made heroic efforts to save Ambassador Stevens and the rest of the US people in Benghazi. But their efforts failed.

And Obama is not responsible for that failure:

Responding to accusations aired on Fox News and picked up elsewhere that officials in Washington had refused to approve military strikes or rescue efforts, the official said no one in the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA or any other organization second-guessed decisions made in Benghazi, and there were no orders to anyone providing support to stand down.

Such bullshit. First, no one credible has accused anyone of second guessing decisions made in Benghazi. Straw man. Second. Stipulating the negative (there were NO orders to stand down), what was the affirmative? That is, what WERE the orders from the WH?

We read paragraph after paragraph about what the CIA did. We read nothing about what Obama did-or didn’t do.

This is like Where’s Waldo: Where’s Obama? Isn’t that kind of the point?

Seriously. Where was he? Simple question. No need for an investigation. Could be answered instantly.

But no. We get these stories about the CIA. We get the tragedy, but the prince is nowhere to be found.

Remind me again. Do we have a Defense Department? A military? What was the DOD, the military, doing when the CIA was trying desperately to improvise? Did they do nothing? That’s what the stories imply. If they did nothing-why?

I’m waiting for the answers. MSM-not so much. Their curiosity has apparently been slaked by this revelation.

When you testify in court, the oath says “Do you swear to tell the truth, the WHOLE TRUTH, and nothing but the truth?” This is not the whole truth. It is a selective, quarter truth at best. It leaves out the most important participants and details. And partial truths can be more misleading that outright falsehoods.

As is the case here.

I said before this is meant to be exculpatory. Stipulating for a moment-I know, I know-that it is the whole truth, it is anything but exculpatory. Because if the only thing that was happening was that the CIA was improvising to retrieve a desperate situation that was careening from bad to worse, that means that Barack Obama was MIA. He did nothing. He left it to the CIA and did not strain every muscle to bring to bear every element of US military power that could possibly have saved some of those who died.

So, the choice tonight is: (1) Barack Obama was MIA, and sat by passively and left it to the CIA to deal with a total clusterf*ck, or (2) he consciously decided not to deploy US military assets to attempt to retrieve the situation.

Either way: Derelict in his duty as Commander in Chief. And BTW, I know he’s CIC because “Barack Obama, Commander in Chief” is embroidered in a patch on that butch bomber jacket he’s donned of late.

The narrative-obviously pushed by the White House-contains some interesting facts intended to be exculpatory, but which are really anything but. For instance, the Super Secret Source denies that the mortars that eventually killed the two ex-SEAL CIA people had been laser designated by anyone in the annex. But SSS does acknowledge that the the defenders of the complex DID point a laser at some attackers. Which means that there were eyes on the enemy. Expert, trained eyes. Which blows to hell Panetta’s “no real time intel” defense.

I said before that the CIA people were improvising-valiantly so. Tragically so. How’s this for improvisation?:

The officers attempted to rally local support to reinforce militiamen hired to guard the compound and obtain heavier weapons, and when they were unable to do so within minutes, they still risked their lives by going to the aid of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues in the main part of the compound, the official said.

What? They’re under attack, and they have to approach the locals and say: “Hey, can I borrow that 50 cal?” Seriously? (Locals, by the way, that were highly likely to be in sympathy with the attackers.)

And think a moment about the import of “rally local support.” Is that like, I dunno, community organizing? That sounds right down Obama’s alley. But again . . . he’s nowhere to be found. Where’s a crack community organizer when you need one?

It gets worse:

U.S. military, landed at the Benghazi airport, where they began negotiating for transportation into town.

So, the most powerful military in the world is reduced to negotiating for heavy weapons and transportation from the locals while its people are under attack.

There are three parts to the Benghazi story. The criminal negligence in preparation. The actions at the time of the attack. The coverup afterwards.

The image of Americans under attack negotiating under fire for weapons and transport speaks volumes about the complete lack of preparation. The fact that the response to the attack appears limited to local improvisation has damning implications for the actions of Obama and the DOD at the time of the attack. This incomplete story is a part of the coverup.

In other words, this story hits the trifecta.

In sum. This is intended to absolve Obama from any responsibility. To focus attention on the CIA.

But Obama’s absence from the story only begs the question of what he was actually doing at the time. Again: What did he know? When did he know it? What did he do about it.

The stories answer the second question: the DOD and WH were informed of the attack around 4PM ET. Other than that, Obama’s actions or inactions are a complete and utter mystery.

A mystery that could be solved instantaneously, and a mystery that a real media would be demanding to solve.

But not ours. After ignoring Benghazi for days when numerous leaks portrayed Obama in a very damning light, they now all trip over themselves to run this leak-a press release, really-front and center because in their little minds it absolves Obama.

But just because he doesn’t appear in this story doesn’t mean that he’s off the hook. If he really wasn’t a player (and no, that wasn’t a reference to his campaign buddy Jay-Z), then he was utterly derelict in his responsibilities. If he was a player, what plays did he call? Why?

We need to know. Now.

PS. Why did it take 51 days for this story to get out? Hell, why did it take almost a week since the original allegations of a failure to act were first made for this story to appear? Has it taken them that long to figure out what to say? I could imagine, given the need to negotiate an official line that the WH, State, the CIA, and DOD could buy into. And the inference that I draw from the fact that the WH and DOD are totally missing from this narrative is that they are hiding because they have something to hide.